


Thief in the Garden

by strawhouses



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cabeswater - Freeform, Cuddling, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, Kavinsky lives, M/M, Magician Adam Parrish, Pre-Slash, Protective Adam, protective cabeswater
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-22
Updated: 2017-02-22
Packaged: 2018-09-26 08:05:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9875087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawhouses/pseuds/strawhouses
Summary: He couldn’t forget Ronan’s lifeless body, the lovely eyes fraught with fear and glossy in death, the flawless skin torn open.Greywaren, Cabeswater whispered.Give me a break, Adam thought. But the truth was, they were on the same page.The night after the church scene in BLLB, Adam can't sleep and goes to see Ronan. He finds that Kavinsky is already there.





	

**Author's Note:**

> AU where Kavinsky survived the 4th of July. Implied offscreen dubious consent between Ronan and Kavinsky.

Adam woke up at midnight. He was usually a heavy sleeper, but the events of the day— the church, Ronan’s double dead before him, their fight, his father, Cabeswater’s intervention—were buzzing beneath his skin. He lay in bed for a few moments trying to coax himself back to sleep, but something was eating at him. _Next time you can die alone,_ he’d said. It was like that with Adam and Ronan: every soft, sacred thing punctured by the sharpness of one or the other of them. When Adam thought— allowed himself to think— about what it might be like, to be with Ronan, for them to be together, he always made himself acknowledge that two damaged people couldn’t miraculously make for a perfect union. Maybe couldn’t be expected to make a union at all. _Next time you can die alone._ He couldn’t forget Ronan’s lifeless body, the lovely eyes fraught with fear and glossy in death, the flawless skin torn open.

_Greywaren,_ Cabeswater whispered.

_Give me a break,_ Adam thought. But the truth was, they were on the same page.

 

The windows of Monmouth were dark when he arrived. This gave Adam a moment of pause— it was only midnight, and his two best friends, notoriously insomniacs, were usually still awake at this hour. Maybe he was overstepping, and they were asleep, and he would be violating their home to walk in like he belonged there tonight. A wave of an old feeling washed over him— inadequacy, jealousy. He was not Gansey, not Ronan, not from money or magic. Just Adam.

_Magician,_ Cabeswater whispered. That was true. He was the Magician. And, he reflected, he’d put on clothes to come over here and spent the gas, so he might as well finish the job. If no one was home he could leave Ronan a note. What would the note say? _Let’s talk?_ That sounded too conspicuous. He’d cross that bridge when he came to it. He just needed to see Ronan alive and well, no matter what happened. That was what he needed. He ascended the staircase and approached their door. With his good ear, he could hear the television buzzing, which settled his nerves a bit. Maybe they were watching one of their stupid sci-fi movies; maybe he could join in, sit with his shoulders brushing Ronan’s, and they could move on like that, in the quiet way they often did.

He knocked on the door and waited.

No answer came. It was quiet inside but for the television. Maybe they couldn’t hear his knock over the TV, he reasoned, and he pushed open the door.

Joseph Kavinsky was sitting on the couch in the living room. Ronan lay in his lap, seemingly asleep, and one of Kavinsky’s hands stroked Ronan’s hair, while the other held a bottle of swirling silver liquid, like mercury made to drink. Something seized Adam’s heart. The television flashed in front of them, illuminating the room one minute, obscuring it the next.

He had not seen Kavinsky since last summer, since the Fourth of July. Kavinsky somehow survived the firestorm— Adam privately believed Ronan had pulled him out of the worst of it at the last possible second, but it was impossible to talk to Ronan about that day under any circumstances.

Cabeswater had been all over Adam then, and he didn’t yet have Persephone to help guide him. His memories from that time were sometimes vague and dreamy. He wondered, now, if Ronan had visited Kavinsky. If, after he’d been released from the hospital and moved away, if Ronan had visited him there. If they’d hooked up. Adam believed Ronan when he said he hated Kavinsky for what he’d done, but he also knew how a person could get under your skin. And he could imagine all too well Ronan turning back to Kavinsky in moments of weakness, under the cover of night, the two alone with their dreams again.

“Trailer trash,” Kavinsky said amiably, turning his head with some effort to look at Adam. “Welcome to the party.” He shook Ronan’s shoulder and Adam realized, as he grew closer, that Ronan’s eyes were open, just barely, but blank and unblinking and dilated. “You hear that, Lynch? We’ve got a guest. You’re being a terrible host right now, really.” Ronan didn’t move. Adam flashed back to earlier that day, the dead Ronan before him, his eyes glazing over. This couldn't be that— this wasn’t—

Adam lurched forward. “Is he— what’s wrong with—” But now that he was close to Ronan, Adam could see that he was alive. Ronan took shallow breaths in Kavinsky’s lap, eyes unfocused, staring at nothing. He blinked, and in slow motion, turned his head ever so slightly to look at Adam. There was no recognition in that stare. There was a line of drool running from his mouth onto Kavinsky’s pants. There was, Adam realized with a jolt, come on his cheek. It was not until this moment that Adam could admit to himself how comfortable he’d gotten with Ronan’s eyes on him. This was the antithesis of that, wrong and perverted and empty. Ronan’s blown-out eyes slid their gaze away from Adam and onto the floor.

“Where’s Gansey?” Adam managed.

“I don’t know, man. Not here, obviously. I don’t look a gift ass in the mouth.” He snickered to himself, finding this funny. “When the master’s out, the Lynch will play.” He stroked Ronan’s hair again. Adam felt sick.

“What did you give him?”

“Comet in a bottle. Feel-better-juice. Shit, I don't know. It just works. You want?” Kavinsky regarded Adam, possibly for the first time. It was the regard Adam was least interested in in all of the world.

“I don’t drink,” Adam said, and Kavinsky’s spark of interest was gone.

“It’s not a drink. It’s a miracle. Kills your brain.”

“Since I actually have a brain left to kill, I think I’ll pass,” Adam said. Then: “You should get out of here.”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “Lynch and I have business to conduct. The night is young.”

Kavinsky took a small sip of the silver liquid and made an exaggerated noise of contentment. The effect was immediate. He leaned against the back of the couch, eyes closed.

_Usurper,_ Cabeswater whispered.

“Besides,” Kavinsky murmured. “This isn’t your castle, is it? It’s sorta like you’re the person who cleans toilets and you’re telling me, a notable motherfucking castle expert, to go home. Maybe it’s _you_ who should go home. Maybe I like this castle. Ever think of that?” He dissolved into weak laughter. Movement drew Adam’s eye, and he could see that Ronan was stirring slightly, rubbing his eyes.

“He’s my friend. You’re not anything to him. Or in general. You should get out of here,” Adam said again.

_Get out,_ Cabeswater whispered. It was one of those moments when Adam couldn’t tell if it’d happened in his head or in the outside world.

For a moment, Kavinsky almost looked shaken. Perhaps, Adam thought, he could sense the power underneath the words. But then it was gone.

“Jealous, Parrish? I can’t help that I’m his drug of choice,” Kavinsky said. “And since you and Dick Three won’t even spare him a pity fuck, I guess that duty falls to me. But it’s not so bad. He’s a good boy. Does what he’s told.”

There were too many layers of vileness to that statement, so Adam pushed it away, focusing on the task at hand. He was good at that. He’d had enough; he was tired and felt sick and could hear Ronan’s shallow breaths in his good ear. He thought of earlier that day, with his father, and Cabeswater, and he knew what he wanted. 

Robert Parrish, though for so long the primary terror of Adam’s life, was a simple man. He knew nothing of magic forests or buried kings. A thorn had been enough to scare him off— the promise that Adam knew things he didn’t, had power he never would. That would not be enough for Kavinsky, who would be draining Cabeswater night and day if Adam wasn’t stopping him. It would need to be bigger than that.

Cabeswater brushed gently at the side of Adam’s mind. It had an idea. Adam couldn’t see it yet, but he could feel it— those who came before him hating what Kavinsky stood for. Whatever power existed in Cabeswater hating what Kavinsky did to it, to its Greywaren. Something like justice. Something like retribution.

Adam closed his eyes. _Okay,_ he thought, giving permission. _Go ahead._

Adam didn’t consider himself particularly creative. What he did was take what existed and manipulate it to his needs. Things didn’t spring to his mind from nothingness, like Ronan; he made things from scraps and turned them into ideas, research papers, solutions. But as Cabeswater worked with him to do this deed, he thought there was an element of imagination to it. Cabeswater had an idea, but Adam was its eyes, so it formed to his imagination, with Cabeswater’s input. It might have been influenced by a book or a movie; it might have been something he had wished to save him as a child. Rather: _she_ might have been.

 

“Jesus motherfucking Christ,” Kavinsky was saying from the couch.

 

Adam opened his eyes.

 

Before him was a woman, but also a tree. Somehow, both. She was taller than him, her hair-branches scraping the ceiling of Monmouth. Her form was that of a human woman, but her skin was bark and vines and leaves. There were hollow places between the gaps in her foliage, but she moved with ease as she walked towards Kavinsky. The boy scrambled off his seat on the couch— Adam watched with a moment of panic, but Ronan’s head only hit the cushion heavily in Kavinsky’s absence. Upright, with the streetlights and the television screen illuminating him, Adam could see how measly Kavinsky really was. He was as bony as Adam himself was, maybe moreso. In his effort to move towards the door, his white sunglasses had been knocked askew from their perch in his hair; one handle hung off his head loosely. 

 

Kavinsky scrambled for the door, but the plant woman glided towards it and blocked his path. With a rustling noise, she outstretched one long, leafy arm, and pointed a twig-finger at him.

“What does she want? What does she fucking want, Parrish?” Kavinsky asked, eyes wild.

There were a few possibilities there. Though the question of her _wanting_ implied sentience, which was something that Adam would contemplate later, he decided that he and Cabeswater’s needs had, of late, been the same. So maybe this would be the same, too. And what Adam wanted was for Kavinsky to be scared, but mostly for him to fuck off, forever.

“She wants you to fuck off,” Adam said. “Forever.”

“Fine!” Kavinsky said. He lunged for the door, but a branch snaked out and caged him in on one side. “I said fine! I’ll fuck off, I mean it! Call her off!”

How might Adam go about calling her off? As he considered this, the tree-woman’s head turned towards him. It was unsettling— she didn’t really have a face— but he sensed that she was looking for direction, for a next step.

He thought Kavinsky could afford to stay on this particular step for a moment longer.

“You have to promise you’ll stay away from Ronan,” Adam said finally. “Cabeswater’s pretty pissed at you for messing with him. You have to promise you’ll leave him alone, and you have to mean it. She’ll know, otherwise. And she’ll come find you.”

“Fucking hell,” Kavinsky whined. “Fine, you stupid tree bitch, I’ll stay away. But that doesn’t mean he’ll leave _me_ alone, I mean, the boy’s got it bad—”

Just as Adam sighed in exasperation and disgust, the woman seemed to know what to do. A bark-covered hand seized the front of Kavinsky’s white tank-top and in one fluid motion lifted him into the air by it. The next, Kavinsky was pressed against the wall, held in place by a sturdy-looking branch.

“Promise,” Adam said. “You have to promise.”

“I promise!” Kavinsky said. “I promise! Call her off, Parrish, please, for fuck’s sake—”

Adam released a breath and the branch let him go. Kavinsky fell to the floor and groaned for a moment.

“You can go now,” Adam said. Kavinsky wobbled to his feet and took in the scene for one last moment: Ronan as still as a corpse on the couch, the TV flickering, the plant-woman towering over him serenely, and Adam, arms crossed, simmering with power. Then he wrenched the door open and ran, leaving it ajar.

Adam heaved a sigh of relief. He closed the door quietly, then rested his forehead against it, trying to process everything that had just happened.

Something touched his shoulder gently. It was the tree woman. She rested a twig-finger there, and before his eyes, Adam watched a blue lily bloom in its place. He took it and held it delicately; it was slightly warm, as if alive, and its petals were soft. It was a more vibrant blue than he’d ever seen on something living.

As Adam looked at the flower, the tree-woman moved towards Ronan.

“Hold on,” Adam said quickly. “Be careful—” but all she did was brush Ronan’s hair with a fingertip, just once, and leave a second blue lily beside his head.

“Oh,” Adam said softly. “Thank you.”

What did one do, with the aftermath of creation? This was not Matthew, or Chainsaw; the tree-woman couldn’t go to school, wouldn’t be content to sit on his shoulder. What did this power mean? Could he ever hope to understand it?

_Shhh,_ said Cabeswater. The tree woman turned her back to Ronan and walked past Adam, towards the door. She paused there for a moment and seemed to look at him. Then she turned the handle, opened the door, and left through it.

A beat later, Adam ran to the still-open door, but there were no signs of her; not even a leaf to indicate she’d been there in the first place. He scrambled towards the large windows in front of Monmouth, to see if she had gone to the parking lot, but she had not. She was not anywhere. It was over.

“Adam?” Ronan said softly.

His voice broke through Adam’s thoughts. Adam remembered why he was here in the first place, Adam was seized with a wave of unease— at what to tell Ronan, at what Ronan would have to tell him, at where they even stood with one another, at what had happened earlier today. The general heart-attack madness that came from interacting with Ronan Lynch.

Right now, though, he looked very young. He was sitting up. His short hair was a little longer than usual— due for a shave, then— and slightly messy. His eyes were still bleary but more focused; he rubbed one tiredly.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

Adam’s instinct, in spite of whatever bravery he had been able to muster a few minutes ago, was to run. He did not want to do this. He felt on the edge of something here, with Ronan, and he didn’t want to fall off of it. And there were some truths he thought maybe he didn't want to know.

But he had walked away earlier today. That was the whole issue. **A** nd it might’ve been because of that that Kavinsky was even here, and—

Adam pushed himself forward, away from the door and towards the couch. “How do you feel?” he asked uncertainly.

“Weird,” Ronan said. Detachedly, Adam realized that Ronan’s guard was down in a way that Adam had hardly seen it. Something about that made him ache.

“I think I’m still drunk,” Ronan said. “I can’t remember what—” Then he stopped, looking intently at Adam’s feet. Adam looked down too, and then he saw it, and wished he could’ve stopped Ronan from seeing it. It was Kavinsky’s white sunglasses. They had fallen off in his struggle.

Ronan cautiously— a strange thing to apply to Ronan— reached forward and picked up the sunglasses. His face was unreadable; back to the walls Adam knew him to have. Then he swore, looked away.

“Did he— hurt you?” Adam asked softly.

“That’s usually the point,” Ronan muttered. His head was bowed, a hand over his eyes, muffling his voice slightly. “Nothing I didn’t ask for, probably.”

They were both quiet. Adam could not think of what to say. He sank down next to Ronan on the couch, filling Kavinsky’s void. He thought he could still smell smoke and sweat and candy in K’s wake.

“He’s a bad habit,” Ronan said finally. “I thought I’d kicked it, but I guess not. Fuck. I just wanted to forget. He’s good for that.”

“Forget what?”

“Everything that happened,” Ronan said. “How I fucked it up.”

“Fucked what up?” Adam was playing catch up, he didn’t want to walk away from this, or let Ronan blow it off when Adam was still trying to understand. It felt vital, important. Ronan was important.

Ronan paused then, and looked at Adam, his eyes tired under their long lashes. Then he looked at the ground again. “You and me,” he said. His eyes flicked back to Adam, watching for a reaction. Adam didn’t know how to react. He wanted to wipe the come off of Ronan’s cheek. He wanted them to be back at St. Agnes together, drifting off to sleep, Ronan barely a foot away from Adam’s mattress, cracking jokes so that Adam would reach out a foot and kick him lightly.

“You didn’t fuck it up,” Adam said. Then, almost without meaning to, he seized a sock from the floor— this was, after all, Monmouth— and wiped Ronan’s face.

“What do you mean I didn’t— what the fuck are you doing?” Ronan asked, leaning away from the sock.

Adam couldn’t think of a lie fast enough. “There was come on your face,” he said finally.

“Oh,” Ronan said.

“It’s fine,” Adam said, though it wasn’t, really.

“Not really,” Ronan said.

Adam dropped the sock on the floor and they both stared at it. In spite of themselves it seemed safer to look at the sock than at each other.

“Why did you come here, Parrish?” Ronan asked softly. Because of the softness, Adam fought back his urge to reply with vitriol.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Adam said finally, “Because I was thinking about today. And I just— I needed to see if you were okay. Which you clearly _weren’t,_ so—“

“Okay,” Ronan said.

“Okay?” This seemed too easy a solution. Surely this was the part where they fought and Adam regretted ever having met Ronan.

“You didn’t fuck it up, either,” Ronan said. “You know that, right?” Something about this caught Adam by the heart, and for a moment, he didn’t trust his voice. He didn’t understand anything, but maybe he was on the verge of it, but that— what he thought he knew, it didn’t make any sense.

Ronan sat up abruptly, looking around the room. His eyes were still slightly dilated, but it was clear something had changed. “Where’s K?” He said.

“A plant lady chased him off,” Adam said weakly.

“Fuck,” Ronan said. “I knew this was a dream.” Then he did something strange, which was to crush himself down lower on the couch, and lean his head against Adam’s shoulder.

They had never been this close before. They were very close. Ronan’s short hair brushed against the part of Adam’s arm not covered by his t-shirt. Adam’s heart pounded in his chest.

“This isn’t— do you— should I—” he started, but Ronan cut him off.

“Do you think I have a chance with him?” he asked sleepily. “Like, in real life, I mean. I guess you don’t know. That was dumb, forget that.” He curled himself into a smaller form, pulling his feet onto the couch. He was still nestled against Adam’s side and if Adam turned his head he could breathe Ronan in. Underneath the scent of Kavinsky he smelled like hay, gasoline and Cabeswater.

He took Adam’s hand in his own. Ronan’s hand was warm and a little rough, and Adam found himself running his thumb over the scars and scratches, the bruised knuckles.

“I think,” Adam began shakily, “I think you do. Have a chance with him.”

“Cool,” Ronan mumbled into Adam’s shoulder. “Goodnight.”

Surely he should move. It would make sense to move. It would make sense to leave. He had no dog in this fight. He should probably get in touch with Gansey, explain what was going on. Or maybe mind his own business. He should leave. He should get a head start on his next Economics paper. 

He did not leave. He did not move. He stayed where he was, with Ronan breathing softly at his side, until their breaths fell into one another as if by design, and Adam fell asleep.


End file.
